Puzzles
by ducky76
Summary: Raph muses about himself and his brothers and just how well he knows each of them after one shocks him.


Puzzles

Raphael watched his brother determinedly, a small sigh of content escaping the sleeping turtle's lips as he snuggled into the warmth of the blankets that had be set on his prone form by Master Splinter. The hot-headed turtle had insisted that he take over the job of looking after his brother when Master Splinter had announced that he would recover with a bit of rest and a watchful eye. The rest of his family had gone to bed, realizing that he wouldn't be budged from the spot that night.

Raph could hear the sounds of the storm raging outside. Just hours earlier, he'd been out there, stalking about, angry from his most recent disagreement with Raph. It always seemed like the shittiest nights turned even shittier for him, though. So of course, on top of being cold, wet, and seriously pissed off, Raph had also been ambushed by about twenty gang members. Thankfully, one of his brothers had thought to go after him into the storm and had come to his assistance. Raph was sure that after this night, he would always hate stormy nights, more so than he ever had.

Once, when the turtles had been about ten, they'd been stuck in all day, due to a bad storm outside. Of course, Raph, never having been good with sitting around idly in the sewers, had been bored out of his mind, and he'd been directing his frustration at his family. Donnie, after watching Raph get particularly nasty with Leo, had suggested that he try entertaining himself with a puzzle.

Raph had made some off-hand comment about how that might just result in a worse case of boredom, but he'd snatched away the offered box of pieces and spilled it onto the table anyway. After trying to jam pieces together where they didn't fit and throwing some pieces across the room, he had simply stormed off and given up on it. He just wasn't able to figure out the damned things, and Raph never had liked anything he wasn't good at, which was plenty. The way he saw it, who the hell needed to figure out a puzzle anyway when there were plenty of things plain as day right in front of your face? Why complicate a perfectly clear picture by cutting it up and scrambling the pieces?

Raph was a clear picture. He was one of the easiest turtles to figure out. He wore his heart on his sleeve and announced his every opinion out loud, world be damned if it didn't care for them. He was unfalteringly loyal, willing to throw himself in the line of fire for all that he held dear. And he held a lot of things dear. His brothers and father, for one. And there were also April and Casey. And then, there was the city and all the people in it who needed some kind of protecting.

He cared about the kids who ran around on the playgrounds in the afternoon, laughing and smiling, sometimes crying when they scraped a knee. He cared about the snobby rich businessmen in expensive suits, talking on their cell phones as they crossed the streets, suitcase in hand. He cared about and truly appreciated the pizza shop owners, especially the ones who had fulfilled some of Mikey's craziest- and most delicious- pizza requests. Hell, Raph even cared about the people who fell into the gray area, the ones who weren't exactly the straightest of people but weren't quite evil. Like drugged-up hookers or small-time thieves, ones who resorted to minor crimes because they really had no other choice. It wasn't like anyone else had ever given a damn about most of them, so they weren't entirely to blame for their problems.

Raph was prone to extremes of emotion that he was unable to contain, often channeling them into rage. He could be counted on to always throw the first punch and to pretty much never agree with Leo. After all, however loyal and protective he was, Raph never could accept being ordered around. Not even Master Splinter had complete control over him. Dealing with Raph was like dealing with a ticking time bomb. They could all, by now, count down the seconds until he was about to explode, and some well-practiced at it could manage to cut the right wires just in time if they were careful.

Mikey was an open book, much like Raph, except he was pretty much always cheery, which made him even less complicated. He'd much rather play games than take something seriously. Like Raph, he was also had a tendency to take a leap before thinking it through. He had the biggest heart in the world, kind of like a little kid, which led his older brothers to feel very protective of him. He would do almost anything to put a smile on someone's face. It was probably his naïveté that led him to be that way. No matter what the youngest turtle experienced, the world was always sunshine and happiness when he looked at it. If something bad happened, Mikey could be counted on to lighten the mood with a bad joke. Mike was often the remedy to the turtles' unhappiness.

He was even the easiest to handle when he actually did get upset. All anyone had to do with a sad Mikey was play the role of happy Mikey. This basically entailed making jokes on par with the level of corniness of Mike's own and offering to make a pizza run. Or if Mikey was truly depressed, a simple big brotherly hug and some words of comfort would do. The kid really wasn't too hard to please.

Then there was Leo, solemn and less vocal of his opinions, but still relatively uncomplicated. Even if he didn't say what he thought, it was easy to know what was on his mind. He saw things as pretty much black and white, wrong and right. Something was either against the rules or it abided by them. He didn't see that gray area that Raph was particularly understanding of, which often caused a clash between the two eldest. Master Splinter had sat them both down once after an argument and had tried to help them sort out their differences. According to him, they both had very strong honor codes that they valued, but these codes were just so very different that they were in constant disagreement. He hoped that one day they'd realize just how similarly they felt about doing what was honorable and that they would respect that honor meant something different to them both.

It was pretty easy to know what Leo would and would not approve of before an action was even taken, and if a person was unsure what he'd think, it would be made fairly clear to them as soon as he found out whatever they had done. Leo may have been master to his emotions, but he still seemed to have a fairly hard time hiding the glint of disapproval in his eye. Raph could always tell if it was hidden there or not. Of course, that might've come from having years of experience getting under Leo's skin.

Don was different than his brothers; he was a puzzle. Of course, some of the pieces were assembled already, so the entire picture wasn't really quite so obscured as if they were still shifting around in the puzzle box. Raph had always accepted those pieces already assembled for him as the whole picture, though, as if it was as clear as the pictures both Leo and Mikey presented. But that acceptance was just Raph doing what he did best with things he did poorly: give up.

Thing was, Raph may not have been the only person guilty of given up on piecing together this puzzle. To the untrained eye, he was Donatello, the mildest of the mutant turtles, the genius who preferred to try all other options before leaping into a fight, whose every action was well thought-out and precise, who had a love for science and technology. He didn't say or show quite so much of his mind as his brothers did. He did talk plenty, but what he said was not often that revealing of how he felt, not that it meant his opinion held less weight than any of the others'.

But now that Raph thought about it, there had to be more than that to his younger brother. Donnie was brilliant, so he clearly thought a lot about everything, clearly had an opinion on everything. In fact, it could be assumed that he had more thoughts and opinions than the rest of the turtles, yet Raph realized he knew the least of them. He didn't operate by any of the systems the others did. He didn't always see gray areas, yet there wasn't always just black and white. And he certainly wasn't naïve enough to take everything lightly. Raph wasn't quite sure what Don's system was.

Raph understood his other brothers well enough to have a general idea of how they would react in different situations. How could he expect to pinpoint Donnie's course of action if he couldn't figure out just what made him tick?

That night Donnie, really had proven just how much he could shock his brothers. It wasn't that he'd taken a bullet meant for Raph that shocked them though. It was that when he'd seen that Raph was in trouble, he hadn't made calculations in his head, hadn't planned his course of action. He'd jumped right into action, attacked three of the thugs that had jumped Raph, impaling one with Raph's dropped sai, and _then _had proceeded to take a bullet meant for Raph.

Raph frowned as Don shifted a little in sleep and made of soft whine in his throat. Don's head tossed back and forth uncomfortably.

Raph set his hand on the top of his little brother's head and rubbed his thumb gently across his brow, where his bandana had been removed. "It's ok Donnie," he said muttered worriedly. "I'm here, alright?"

Don seemed to settle at that and Raph sighed. He looked down at where the bullet had managed to hit the exposed flesh of Don's left shoulder. The would had been bandaged tightly after the bleeding had been stopped. Just a few inches over and he might've died. And the puzzle that was Donnie would've been left incomplete.

They'd been lucky, and as soon as Don woke up, Raph was going to take advantage of this second chance and the eye-opening incident that had almost taken Don from them. Funny, Raph thought, how another storm had brought him another puzzle figure out.

Only… Donnie was one puzzle that Raph was determined _not _to leave unfinished.


End file.
